


stop that

by trippslair



Category: 2.43 清陰高校男子バレー部 | 2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu (Anime)
Genre: Body Focused Repetitive Behavior, Gen, Nail Biting, bfrb, tagging all that to be on the safe side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29987331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trippslair/pseuds/trippslair
Summary: Chika bites his nails. Which isn't usually a big deal, unless it becomes a habit that leaves his fingers raw and hurting on the outside as much as he is on the inside.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	stop that

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I couldn't stop thinking about the way Chika bit his finger in ep7 after that confrontation with the rest of the team, and now this exists.

_“There’re better ways to say that, you dumbass.”_

Yuni’s words were but a drone in the background. The buzzing in Chika’s own head was so loud he barely heard them. His eyebrows knit together, he twisted his hands around each other, and there was a strange ache somewhere behind his ribs.

Chika hadn’t meant to antagonize his teammates. He was just saying what he knew was right. They had a way to win, they had the right people for it, so why had they looked at him like that? The worried set of Uchimura’s eyes, the narrowing of Aoki’s. The way Kanno chided him for bringing it up now of all times. Couldn’t they see that he was only trying to help?

He couldn’t anticipate their reactions, try as he might.

He hadn’t realized he was biting his finger until Yuni took his hand and pulled it away from his mouth. “Stop that,” he said softly. He held Chika’s hand down between them. “It’s okay. They’ll need some time to think about it. Oda will take it from here.”

Chika’s feet felt heavy, rooted to the spot. He struggled to make sense of the weight in his chest until he realized it was fear holding him down. That he was scared to go inside and have to face everyone, to have to go through practice feeling like they’d rather have him gone.

Yuni let go of his hand when he turned to head inside. “Are you coming?”

“You still want me to?”

Yuni tilted his head, frowning. “Of course. What are you talking about?”

Chika bit his teeth together.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Yuni had told him “This is why you don’t have any friends” because Chika tended to plainly state what was right in front of them. After what happened at his old school, he’d been terrified of history repeating itself, and one fallout had made him stop playing volleyball altogether. He’d had no intention to return, as much as he missed playing the sport he loved. People made it clear what they thought of him. Yuni most of all.

Yet it had been Yuni who brought him back, Yuni who wanted to play volleyball with him now. He’d told him so directly. That, at least, Chika should be able to trust. Right?

“In a minute,” Chika told him.

Yuni nodded and grabbed his bag.

Remaining outside, Chika wound off the tape on his index finger and reapplied it a little tighter than necessary. He loosened it again. The end stopped sticking as well as before, but he didn’t have time to go fix it. He went into the gym with his shoulders hunched and head bent, avoiding the others’ eyes, the glares he expected to find there. It wasn’t until Oda set up the first exercise and tapped the back of his hand to Chika’s chest, smiling, that he felt a little safer.

* * *

The last time he’d bit his fingers till they bled had been in middle school, the morning Yuni didn’t show up for their match.

Coach had shot down the person worrying if Yuni had been in an accident, but the words took root in Chika’s head till he couldn’t shake them off.

Vexation rose among his teammates on their way to the venue.

“I can’t believe he didn’t show,” one boy said.

“We need him, too,” another replied, tapping his foot nervously.

A third one crossed his arms and tapped his fingers against his elbow. He scoffed. “Maybe he got overwhelmed and ran away.”

Chika’s hands tensed in his lap. What if he had? The pressure had gotten the best of Yuni yesterday, what if he’d—He clenched his hand into a fist, focusing on the sting of his nails in his palm. No. Not Yuni. He’d struggled, the day before, and Chika had taken it upon himself to win them the match, but he’d be back today.

Chika lifted his hand to his mouth and pressed his teeth to the sensitive skin behind his nails.

Yuni _needed_ to be back.

During the game, Chika’s eyes kept darting to the side of the court, hoping to see Yuni pop up with some lousy excuse about what’d made him late. The same tactics Chika had used the day before didn’t work again. They were already losing when he dislocated his left middle finger early on, but he bit back the pain until the end of the match. It hadn’t made a difference.

The nurse who took off the tape to examine his finger raised her eyebrows at the red, irritated skin around his fingernails. She didn’t say anything about it until he picked up his bag to leave.

“Between school and sports, they put you kids under too much stress,” she noted with a disapproving shake of her head.

Chika held his tongue. He enjoyed volleyball and could juggle it with schoolwork more than fine. It was being unable to look inside his teammates’ heads and know what they were thinking that caused him agony. It was allowing himself to trust someone only to have that fragile bond blow up in his face that hurt more than picking at the skin of his fingers.

* * *

These days, Chika tried to at least be aware of it when he bit his fingers again. He didn’t always succeed.

It was mostly harmless. An insignificant force of habit. He bit his thumbnail when he was working through a math problem, or pressed his knuckle to his lips when he was reading. Sometimes Yuni let it be. Other times he hooked his index finger around one of Chika’s to bring his hand down to the table.

“Stop that,” he mumbled each time, and continued working on his own thing as though nothing had happened.

Chika would keep his hands down on the table for as long as Yuni was watching him.

He’d started to notice when it wasn’t merely harmless. When he chewed at the space behind his nail, broke skin, and kept biting. Nine times out of ten it happened after he’d gotten into an argument and he couldn’t align his own thoughts with the feelings of the people around him. He couldn’t read those the way he could read the gameplay of an opposing team, and it infuriated him. It made him feel trapped in his own mind. It made his hands restless, his fingers fumbling, and he needed some way to release the tension building inside him.

They were walking to school one morning when Yuni demanded, “Talk to me.” They stopped on the side of the road. “What’s got you stressed?”

“Who says I’m stressed?” Chika asked without much conviction. He’d barely slept, and he didn’t doubt Yuni would notice.

But Yuni meaningfully eyed the fingers on his left hand. Chika hid it behind his back, feeling every bit like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He’d put Band-Aids on his fingers last night when he realized what he was doing, to control the damage. He’d soon enough had to replace them after he gnawed off the first set.

“It’s fine,” he said. He was dealing with it.

Yuni held out his hand palm up. Begrudgingly, Chika gave his hand up to be looked at, to be inspected. He didn’t like feeling so scrutinized. Yuni hummed as he thought.

“Maybe if you painted your nails you would think it too much a waste to bite them.”

“I doubt it.”

Chika had tried the polish that left a bitter taste in his mouth and only refocused on picking at the places not covered in it. He’d tried squeezing a stress ball in his hand but found that didn’t keep him from biting his fingers raw either. He’d even tried wearing gloves but hated the sensation of those on his skin even more than the sores hidden beneath them.

Yuni tightened his fingers around Chika’s hand and asked, hoping, “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Chika answered truthfully.

It wasn’t up to him to fix. Chika wasn’t sure it _could_ be fixed. But he could be aware of it. And he could listen to Yuni when he told him to ‘Stop that’ and maybe try one or two more tricks. He could watch out for what set it off, most of all.

“I _am_ stressed,” he admitted.

Yuni smiled. “Okay.” He squeezed Chika’s hand once more before they continued walking. “About what?”

So Chika told him. And maybe Yuni couldn’t fix his problems, but he could offer some much-needed perspective. He could help take the tumultuous thoughts out of Chika’s head and line them up to be dissected, take care of the ones they could one by one and ease the worries that came only from Chika’s brain messing with him.

When Chika raised his hand again to his mouth absentmindedly, Yuni put his fingers against his wrist.

“Stop that,” he said with a quiet laugh.

Chika eyed his own hand like it’d betrayed him and had to squash his disappointment that he was already doing it again. He clenched his hand into a fist and held it down by his side. It was going to take time. That was okay.

“I’ll try,” he promised.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading 😶


End file.
